The end of the NFL regular season is near, but that doesn’t have to mean the end of daily fantasy football. Beginning this week and running through the playoffs, a special FanDuel Survivor series will be held over four weeks. Through the course of January, the FanDuel Survivor will award $50k in prizes.

Players can get started for just $2 and can find the contest in the lobby by searching for “survivor” under NFL contests. Players must join before the January 1st contest at 1 PM ET to have the chance of participating throughout the month.

How The $50,000 FanDuel Survivor Contests Work

FanDuel’s Survivor contest series will be held during Week 17 of the NFL regular season and the first three weeks of the NFL playoffs. For each round of the Survivor, the field will be cut down, until the final round on January 22nd with 5,000 participants.

Here is a breakdown of the FanDuel Survivor contests being offered in early January:

FanDuel NFL Survivor

Round

# of Spots

# pf Advancers

% of Round Advancing

Prizes for Round

Round 1

29,411

22,000

74.8%

$4,000

Round 2

22,000

14,000

63.6%

$4,000

Round 3

14,000

5,000

35.7%

$4,000

Round 4 - Final Round

5,000

N/A

N/A

$38,000

While most of the prize pool is paid in the final round, some players will also be paid as they progress from round to round. During rounds 1-3, the top 500 players will be paid cash prizes in addition to qualifying for the next round. First place will receive $300.

The finals will pay all 5,000 players who qualify, including $1,000 to first place.

What are FanDuel Survivor Contests?

Survivor contests are multi-round events, which require participants to finish high enough to move on to the next round — the idea being not necessarily to win each round but just to “survive” in order to make it to the next round. If you don’t participate in the first round of the Survivor contest you unfortunately will not be able to join in a later round.

The bread and butter of survivor contests is the last round. Once you have qualified for the final round, your goal will not to survive but to perform as well as you can to win the largest prize. In contrast to the lower rounds where you may put up lower variance lineups, in the final round you likely want to be shooting for the high upside lineup that may also be high variance.